A backbench MP is to investigate the "unanswered questions" from the official inquiry into the death of weapons scientist Dr David Kelly.

The former Liberal Democrat environmental spokesman Norman Baker today revealed his decision to stand down from the shadow cabinet two months ago was based on a quest to establish the "truth" behind Dr Kelly's death. Mr Baker said he wanted to return to the issue because the 2003 Hutton inquiry had "blatantly failed to get to the bottom of matters".

He vowed to question ministers and to unearth new facts in a bid to establish the "truth" of the case.

Dr Kelly was found dead on July 18 2003 after being named as the possible source of a BBC story on the government's Iraq dossier.

I recently read that you had undertaken an further investigation into the death of David Kelly. I am just writing to say that I support your decision in doing this. It does appear that David Kelly did not die from suicide, and there are many unanswered questions about his death, and how it links into the bigger picture of global politics of the last few years.

As a member of the British 9/11 Truth Campaign, I can see that his death was almost certainly in some way related to the sustenance of the "war on terror" myth. Also, the Hutton Report was a whitewash exercise - it did not answer any of the important questions about Kelly’s Death - it only criticised the BBC's coverage of events leading up to it. How bizarre.

I wish you every success in your investigations and hope you that you will have protection from the powerful forces which do not want the truth to be uncovered regarding the agenda which Kelly got in the way of. You may find this interview with Michael Shrimpton has some pertinent information, though we should all be aware of disinformation.

An investigation into "unanswered questions" about the death of weapons scientist Dr David Kelly has been launched by a senior backbench MP.

Lib Dem Norman Baker said the 2003 Hutton inquiry had "blatantly failed to get to the bottom of matters".

And he vowed to quiz ministers and unearth new facts to establish the "truth" of the case.

Dr Kelly was found dead after being named as the possible source of a BBC story on the government's Iraq dossier.

Mr Baker, who is known for his forensic use of parliamentary questions, said he had quit his front bench role partly to concentrate on investigating the scientist's death.

"It struck me as extremely odd at the time that Dr Kelly was thought to have committed suicide in the way he did, at the time he did," Mr Baker told the BBC News website.

"The more I look into it the less convinced I am by the explanation and the more unanswered questions appear which ought to have been addressed properly by the Hutton inquiry or by the coroner."

Inquest

Mr Baker said he thought Dr Kelly had been "badly treated by the government" and part of his motivation in investigating the scientist's death was to "clear his name".

An inquest into Dr Kelly's death was opened and adjourned in July 2003.

The task of investigating the "circumstances surrounding the death" of Dr Kelly was then handed to Lord Hutton, who, following a two month inquiry, concluded the scientist had taken his own life.

Oxford coroner Nicholas Gardiner looked into the possibility of reopening the inquest into Dr Kelly's death.

But after reviewing the evidence with the Lord Chancellor, including material that had not been presented to the Hutton inquiry, he concluded, in a March 2004 hearing at Oxford coroner's court, there was no case for reopening the inquest.

Mr Gardiner said he accepted this would "do little to put an end to the controversy relating to the death of Dr Kelly" but he was satisfied there was no need for further investigation.

Suicide method

Mr Baker said he believed Lord Hutton's inquiry had become preoccupied with a row between the government and the BBC, leaving important questions about Dr Kelly's death unanswered.

"The most important unanswered question is why he would have wanted to commit suicide, which still hasn't been addressed," said Mr Baker.

There was also a question mark over the method Dr Kelly apparently used to commit suicide.

Given his knowledge of the human body, said Mr Baker, it is unlikely the scientist would have decided to kill himself by "slitting a rather hidden artery in his hand".

He said he had established through a parliamentary question that only one person in 2003 had committed suicide this way, which "presumably" was Dr Kelly.

Other puzzles include the fact that although Dr Kelly had supposedly taken 29 co-proxamol painkillers only "a quarter of one tablet" was found in his stomach, said Mr Baker.

Political implications

He said he also wanted to know why the police hunt for Dr Kelly had apparently been launched before the scientist had actually left his house on his final walk, let alone been reported missing.

There were also questions about the time of Dr Kelly's death and the procedures followed at his post mortem.

And Mr Baker said he was also interested in the wider political implications of the scientist's death.

"There were unanswered questions about the way the government conducted itself which got lost in the mire of how the BBC was behaving," he said.

Mr Baker, whose parliamentary question about the Hinduja brothers was the catalyst that led to Peter Mandelson's second resignation from the Cabinet, has been tabling questions to ministers in an effort to establish some basic facts about the Kelly case.

Kelly family

He has also been speaking to medical and legal experts about the case and now wants to speak to anyone who feels they have new evidence.

"I am asking for people to come forward who have knowledge of the facts - knowledge or information which they think should be properly considered and ultimately in the public domain and if they do so I will treat them in confidence."

He said people who thought they could help should write to him at his House of Commons office.

The Lewes MP, who was recently replaced as Liberal Democrat environment spokesman by Chris Huhne, stressed he did not want to speculate about alternative explanations for Dr Kelly's death at this stage.

"The facts do not support suicide, as set out, but nor do they necessarily support anything else and therefore those unanswered questions are what I'm looking in to."

He also said he was keen not to cause unnecessary distress to Dr Kelly's family.

"I have no wish to upset the family in any way and I hope that nothing I am doing is doing that. The fact of the matter is, in this most important of issues, there is a general feeling around that the facts have not been fully explored or revealed."

But he said the Kelly affair was "unfinished business" and there needed to be "political closure" on it.

"The public out there can smell a rat and they don't think it's finished business either," the MP added.

Was Tom Mangold actually a 'friend' of his i wonder. Didnt sound like it to me. If so hes suffering from cognitive dissonance bigtime.
He said words to the effect of "are we to assume 2 men took him out of his house without his wife knowing and carried him 2 miles then cut his wrist..." etc
Why do we have to assume that?
Did 2 men have to take him out of his house without his wife knowing and carry him 2 miles for him to kill himself? No.
I thought he was supposedly out walking his dog or gone for a walk?.

Good on Norman Baker for pursuing this. There are a load of inconsistencies and i cant believe a real friend of his would not want to find out the truth...

7 agencies have investigated and thats enough for him... Special Branch, MI5, MI6 and the CIA being 4 of them... "should we assume they conspired together?" hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm surely not..._________________Positive...energy...activates...constant...elevation. (Gravediggaz)

I know this has been kicked around before, but the idea of a scientist who had access to the worlds most deady substances choosing to take his own life with a rusty pen-knife and a packet of aspirin is simply absurd.

Does anyone else remember seeing on the news an interview of the two paramedics who attended to Dr Kelly's body, and were some of the first on the scene? I remember them saying that there was not as much blood around the body as they would have anticipated, and they were somewhat surprised.

I told my wife at that time that these two were rather "sticking their necks out", and, since then, I've never heard mention or seen of them again.

I can recommend the article in today's Mail on Sunday by Norman Baker. I found it factually totally accurate.

Here is a transcript but the original also has some attention grabbing photographs and is worth getting a copy of.

Quote:

Sunday, July 23, 2006

I believe David Kelly did not commit suicide - and I will prove it

By Norman Baker MP

The Mail on Sunday
23 July 2006

The weapons inspector’s death, three years ago this month, caused a firestorm of controversy. Now this MP – using parliamentary questions, privileged access and forensic analysis – has mounted his own investigation, and it casts a devastating new light on what really happened.

Three years ago, one of those events occurred that suddenly and dramatically change the political landscape. Dr David Kelly, the UK's leading weapons inspector, was found dead under a tree on Harrowdown Hill, Oxfordshire. An inquiry set up under Lord Hutton duly found that Dr Kelly committed suicide.

Today I challenge that conclusion. I do so on the basis that the medical evidence available simply cannot support it, that Dr Kelly's own behaviour and character argues strongly against it, and that there were serious shortcomings in the way the legal and investigative processes set up to consider his death were followed.

After months of intensive enquiry, I reveal new evidence which:

· Shows that the alleged method of suicide chosen, far from being common, was in fact unique. Dr Kelly was the only person in the whole of the UK in 2003 deemed to have died in this way

· Reveals irregularities in the actions of the coroner, relating to the issuing death certificate.

· Proves that the pathologist chosen by the coroner to investigate the death had been on the Home Office approved list for just two years, less than almost all the other 43 approved pathologists.

· Raises questions about the actions taken by the police who attended Dr Kelly's house when he was reported missing, actions which a very senior police officer told me were bizarre.

· Uncovers the cosy cabal of friends of Tony Blair who hand-picked Lord Hutton, and why, and who fixed the rules for his inquiry

The weeks leading up to Dr Kelly's death in 2003 had been charged and eventful. In mid-March, British and American forces had invaded Iraq. Saddam Hussein was deposed and on May 1, US President George Bush declared 'mission accomplished', a claim that rings rather hollow now. Then, on May29, came the allegations, broadcast by the BBC, that the intelligence information about Iraq, which in an unprecedented move the Government had decided to release, had been 'sexed up' to make the case for war stronger, particularly with the assertion that Saddam could have chemical or biological ready to fire within 45 minutes.

No 10's director of communications, Alastair Campbell, went ballistic and launched a blistering attack on the BBC, determined in particular to wreck the career of Today programme reporter Andrew Gilligan. David Kelly had provided Mr Gilligan and others in the BBC with much of the ammunition for the claim that the dossier released by the Government to justify war had been presented in a way that stretched the available intelligence to breaking point. He, along with others in the know, was deeply unhappy about the added spin.

In the end, to further the Government's vendetta with the BBC, the Ministry of Defence and No 10 acted to ensure Dr Kelly's name became public. He was thrust into the unwelcome glare of publicity and made to appear in a Soviet-style televised appearance before the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.

The standard explanation then was that Dr Kelly, a very private man, felt humiliated by this process and let down by the MoD, and he recognised that his actions in speaking to journalists would bring his career to an effective end. They would certainly prevent him from returning to Iraq to do what he did best and enjoyed most uncovering hidden weapons and weapons programmes, so making the world a safer place. And so, according to this view, he left his cottage in Southmoor, walked into the woods and took his own life through a combination of wrist injuries and an overdose of the painkiller co-proxamol. A personal tragedy but nothing more. Case closed.

Except I never subscribed to this conclusion. There were too many unanswered questions, none of which was resolved by the Hutton Inquiry As time has gone by, those questions have gnawed away at me. And I am not alone. In January 2004, three doctors - David Halpin, a specialist in trauma and orthopaedic surgery, Stephen Frost, a specialist in diagnostic radiology, and Searle Sennett, a specialist in anaesthesiology - voiced their doubts about the suicide verdict in a letter to The Guardian. They said Dr Kelly could not have killed himself in the way described to the Hutton Inquiry. Now, having resigned my frontbench role for the Lib Dems earlier this year, I have found the time to conduct my own investigation.

The first problematic area concerns the severed artery in Dr Kelly's wrist. Those who are familiar with the human body will, if they choose to die this way, make an incision the length of the inside forearm because this leads to a very large loss of blood. Those unfamiliar with the body may cut across the wrist, thereby severing the radial artery. Instead, we are asked to believe that Dr Kelly managed to completely sever the ulnar artery, a minor artery of matchstick thickness to be found deep in the wrist on the little finger side of the hand, and protected by nerves and tendons.

It is difficult to believe Dr Kelly would have made this cut. It would have required unusual force to cut through the nerves and tendons, particularly with the gardening knife he had, and the process would have been painful. Even if he did somehow cut this artery himself; it is quite clear that this would not have killed him. I spoke to David Halpin, the former senior orthopaedic and trauma surgeon at Torbay Hospital and The Princess Elizabeth, Exeter. He told me that even the deepest cut here would not have caused death. He also told me that 'a completely transected [severed] artery retracts immediately I and thus stops bleeding, even at a relatively high blood pressure'.

Then there is the evidence of the ambulance team who attended the scene where Dr Kelly was found. They told the Hutton Inquiry that the amount of blood found at the site and on Dr Kelly's clothing was minimal and surprisingly small.

I contacted Dave Bartlett, the ambulance technician who, with paramedic Vanessa Hunt, formed the team that attended the scene. He told me last month that the two of them 'stand by what we have already said 100 per cent'. Vanessa Hunt has said that, in her view 'it is incredibly unlikely that he died from the wrist wound we saw'.

Could Dr Kelly nevertheless have died from the blood he lost? I tracked down Dr Sennett and his response was clear:

'For a man the size of Dr Keily to die from haemorrhage, he would have to lose at least three litres of blood. I suggest that it would be impossible to lose a lethal amount of blood from an ulnar artery which had been cut in the manner described for Dr Kelly.'

Were these doctors right? I wanted to know how many people in the UK died in 2003 from injury to the ulnar artery. I eventually received a forrmal reply from the National Statistician, Karen Dunnell. The answer? One. Presumably Dr Kelly.

There is also the knife allegedly used for the purpose. This was a blunt gardening knife with a concave blade, a singularly inappropriate weapon to use. To cut through nerves and tendons with such a knife must have been difficult. Dr Kelly, with his scientific background and knowledge of the human body, could without doubt have found an easier way to commit suicide had he wished to do so.

It might be argued that this was a spontaneous suicide and that all he had with him was this particular knife, which he often carried. But that is contradicted by the presence of the coproxamol tablets, which, according to the official explanation, demonstrate premeditation. This circle simply cannot be squared.

Evidence presented at the Hutton Inquiry invites us to conclude that Dr Kelly removed three blister packs of these tablets, each containing ten tablets, from his house. The police say that they found 29 out of 30 tablets gone, implying therefore that Dr Kelly had consumed these. It strikes me as odd that Dr Kelly should apparently leave one of the 30 tablets in its place. Surely someone set on suicide will take the maximum dose available, not leave one? Of course this remaining tablet did present the police with a rather obvious clue.

Furthermore, Alexander Allan, the forensic toxicologist at the inquiry, considered that the amount of each drug component found in the blood was only a third of that which would normally be considered fatal. All that was found in Dr Kelly's stomach was the equivalent of the fifth of one tablet. His stomach was virtually empty, which suggests that even if he did swallow 29 tablets, much would have been regurgitated, making it even less likely that these contributed in any significant way to his death.

Interestingly, those who knew Dr Kelly well maintain that he had an aversion to swallowing tablets.

What about the motive? Wasn't Dr Kelly terribly depressed, potentially even suicidal? Those who knew him find that very difficult to accept.

Sarah Pape, his sister, is a consultant plastic surgeon. Referring to conversations with her brother before his death, she told the Hutton Inquiry:

'In my line of work I deal with people who may have suicidal thoughts, and ought to be able to spot those, even in a telephone conversation. But I have gone over and over in my mind the two conversations we had and he certainly did not betray to me any impression that he was anything other than tired. He certainly did not convey to me that he was feeling depressed, and absolutely nothing that would have alerted me to the fact he might have been considering suicide.'

Of course, these were difficult times for Dr Kelly. He was under enormous pressure, had been thrust into the glare of the public spotlight, and had had a torrid time in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee on July 15, just two days before he went for his last walk. That much is known. Less well known is that his good humour and confidence had at least partly returned on July 16, when he gave evidence in private to the Intelligence and Security Committee. I have read the transcript of that meeting and it shows Dr Kelly laughing and even making jokes.

Then there are the e-malls he sent on the morning of July 17, the day' of his disappearance. These were generally upbeat and talked enthusiastically about returning to Iraq.

So apparently were his phone calls, for after one to the Ministry of Defence, a flight to lraq was booked for him for the following week. One e-mail, however, did refer to 'dark actors playing games'. Who they were, and what games they were playing, has yet to be established. Another factor that mitigates against the suicide theory is that one of Dr Kelly's daughters was due to be married shortly and he was obviously looking forward to that.

Lastly, it should not be forgotten that Dr Kelly was a practicing member of the Baha'i faith, which strongly condemns the act of suicide.

Yet within 24 hours of the e-mails being sent, David Kelly was dead. We had lost the man who had probably done more than anyone else to reduce the threat to the world from biological and chemical weapons.

But with a cruel asymmetry; while Dr Kelly lay dead under a tree, Tony Blair, the mouthpiece of the now discredited 45-minute claim, was being feted by President Bush and being offered the rare honour of a Congressional Medal. The Prime Minister was on a plane from Washington to Tokyo when he was told of Dr Kelly's death. His response was immediate. Before the journey was over, Lord Brian Hutton had been appointed to head an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly'.

How was this breakneck-speed appointment made? Parliament had no say in this. With perfect political timing for the Prime Minister, the Commons had adjourned for its long summer recess at 4.55pm on July 17, just hours before Dr Kelly's body was found. The decision to hold an inquiry; the remit given to it and the choice of the judge to chair it were all decisions for the Government. I have now had it officially confirmed that it was Blair's old friend Charlie Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, who handpicked Lord Hutton, having discussed the matter first with the Prime Minister and formally consulted the Senior Law Lord.

Why choose Lord Hutton? In a parliamentary answer to me, Harriet Harman, the Minister at the Department for Constitutional Affairs, confirmed that he had not chaired any public inquiry before he was asked to undertake this most sensitive of tasks.

There is no suggestion that Lord Hutton is anything other than an independent person of integrity; but his record may have suggested to those choosing him that he would be likely to produce the right result.

In Northern Ireland, where he sat as a judge, he sentenced ten men to a total of 1,001 years' imprisonment in 1984 on the word of a paid informer who was granted immunity from prosecution. As a senior barrister, he had also defended the Government of the day against allegations that internees in Northern Ireland had been tortured. More recently, he led the campaign against the extradition of General Pinochet back to Chile on the grounds that one of the five Law Lords involved in the case had links with the human-rights group Amnesty International.

As Sir Humphrey observed in an episode of [the BBC's] 'Yes, Minister', you don't choose a judge who can be leaned on. You choose one who doesn't have to be.

Whatever the reason, it is clear that what should have been a rigorous investigation into the death of Dr Kelly turned out to be nothing of the sort.

First, the Lord Chancellor decided the inquiry should not, as expected, be held under the rules established by the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921. The significance of this is that witnesses could not be subpoenaed. Nor did they have to give evidence under oath. The inquiry was therefore less rigorous and formal than a standard coroner's inquest.

Then there are the actions of the Oxfordshire coroner himself, Nicholas Gardiner. His inquest was adjourned on the instruction of Lord Falconer. But I have unearthed the fact that a full death certificate was issued by the local registrar (following the instructions of the coroner) on August 18 - a week after the Hutton Inquiry started hearing evidence - giving explicit reasons for death.

I have a copy of that certificate. It cites haemorrhage and incised wounds to the left wrist, conclusions that are far from certain for the reasons given above.

When I asked Harriet Harman how it was that the coroner was able to establish cause of death when the Hutton Inquiry had barely started, she replied that he 'was able to ascertain reasons for ... death from the post-mortem report from the Home Office pathologist, Dr Hunt, and the toxicology report from Dr Allen [sic]. The death certificate, we now learn, was issued as a result of a meeting on August 14 between Dr Hunt, Dr Allan (or their representatives) and the coroner. A parliamentary question I asked has now revealed that this meeting followed an unusual, even irregular, meeting between Home Office officials and the coroner on August 11. Doubtless the officials were able to help guide the coroner on the way forward.

So what was the point of setting up an inquiry to look into the circumstances of Dr Kelly's death when the facts had, it appears, already been decided? And where did that leave the normal inquest procedure, as even that wasn't followed?

More pertinently still, the Coroners Rules required that 'where an inquest has been adjourned for any reason', an interim certificate of death shall be issued if needed. In effect, this is a certificate only to confirm death and allow the body to be buried. Clearly, the rule was not followed in this case.

I discussed the matter with Michael Powers QC, a leading expert on coroners' law, who professed himself astonished that a full death certificate could have been issued in this way. So with the Hutton Inquiry barely started, the Oxfordshire coroner determines the cause of death without the normal inquest procedure, bases this on the severing of the ulnar artery, the only such cause of death in the whole of2003, and relies exclusively, it seems, on Dr Allan, who later would tell the inquiry that the level of coproxamol present was insufficient to cause death, and on the findings of pathologist Nicholas Hunt.

What of Dr Hunt? Who selected him for this task? The Oxfordshire coroner, it turns out. He chose him from a list of pathologists approved from the Home Office as being suitably qualified to be competent to investigate suspicious or violent deaths. I have secured a list of those so approved in 2003. It contains the names of 43 such pathologists, many with great experience, having been added to the list as far back as 1978. Dr Hunt was added to the list only in 2001. Just seven ofthe43 pathologists were added after him.

Now it may be that Dr Hunt has much to recommend him, but in a case as sensitive as this, wouldn't it have been more normal to have selected someone with more experience, or indeed, as Michael Powers suggested to me, to have chosen two pathologists to work together?

The police operation was also a rather curious one. The files are all off-limits, locked up at Thames Valley Police headquarters, but an interesting nugget is to be found deep in the inquiry website. 'Operation Mason', as it was termed, was begun at 2.30pm on July 17, around nine hours before David Kelly was reported missing, and at least half an hour before he left his home to go on that last walk. No satisfactory explanation has ever been given for this astonishing foresight on the part of police.

Then there is the response after the call to the police was made. First there was the erection of a 45ft antenna in Dr Kelly's garden. I have spoken to one of the most senior police officers in the UK who could offer no possible explanation for a structure this size and doubted if many police forces actually had such a piece of equipment.

He was also at a loss to explain why Dr Kelly's wife Janice was turfed out of her house in the middle of the night to stand on the lawn for an extended period while a dog was put through the house. He called it 'bizarre'.

At the Hutton Inquiry itself, conflicting evidence was piled on top of conflicting evidence with seemingly no attempt to get to the truth. Crucially, the position of the body seems in doubt, with those who found it - search-party volunteers Louise Holmes and Paul Chapman - insisting the body was sitting up or slumped against a tree, while DC Graham Coe later states it was flat on its back away from the tree.

Moreover, three items the volunteers swear were not present - the blunt knife, a watch and an opened bottle of Evian water - had mysteriously appeared by the body by the time DC Coe left the scene.

Then there are the basic questions that would occur to even a rookie police officer but which here went unasked, or at least unanswered.

Whose fingerprints were on the knife? Was there any DNA other than Dr Kelly's to be found in the blood samples taken? Was Dr Kelly's watch, which lay beside him, broken or intact? What time did it show? What were the last calls made to the mobile phone he had on him? We do not know and Lord Hutton does not ask.

But then Lord Hutton, tasked to examine the circumstances surrounding Dr Kelly's death, seemed peculiarly uninterested in these, giving every appearance of simply going through the motions. In this he was not alone. For the media too, the focus was firmly on the battle between the BBC and the Government. That focus may have taken the light off a much more important story.

After Hutton formally reported, the coroner would have been within his rights to reopen the inquest, but he chose not to do so, despite being made aware of the considerable doubts about the medical evidence. Many people find it hard to accept that Dr Kelly's death was suicide, and the passage of time has only firmed up that doubt. lam conscious that some, particularly those who were close to him, will want to put all this behind them, to move on.

The reality, however, is that this episode is not going to go away. Perhaps Dr Kelly, renowned for his persistence, dedication and aptitude for systematic and logical questioning, would have understood that some of us cannot rest until the many important unanswered questions have finally been resolved.

i remember reading that a witness reported a person at the scene who wasn't idenitfied and the judge openly said the person didn't need to be identified and promptly dismissed the issue all together._________________"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act"

There were conflicting witness statements with regard to the number of people with the first police officer on the scene and the number of those people in or out of uniorm.

Remember, the body was first found by the dog belonging to the search volunteers Paul Chapman and Louise Holmes. They then radioed for the police and were told to return to their car. However on retracing their steps they came across none other than DC Coe...

Five witnesses - the two volunteers, PCs Franklin and Sawyer, and the paramedic (Vanessa Hunt) - clearly state that DC Coe was with two officers. Yet DC Coe himself, testifying some time later, maintains that he was with only one other officer - DC Shields.

Thus, in the six statements with regard to the number of officers accompanying DC Coe, all but one of them - DC Coe's own - state that there are two officers with Coe.

Paul Chapman, identifying them through their Thames Valley Police ID, said these officers were from CID, so I infer from this they were in plain clothes. Vanessa Hunt testified that DC Coe was with two plain-clothed officers - one "search & rescue" (her interpretation of a man dressed in black polo shirt and trousers), and "one other gentleman". DC Coe himself said he was with only one other companion – the plain-clothed detective, DC Shields.

What are we to infer from these anomalies? If five witnesses say that DC Coe was with two men and he says he was with only one, then it is necessary to find out who is telling the truth. Similarly, if some witnesses say these officers are in plain clothes and others say they are in uniform then that needs to be clarified also. On the face of it, it looks as though DC Coe is not telling the truth about being accompanied by only one officer and that PCs Franklin and Sawyer could also be mistaken about the two officers being "uniformed".

So it would seem that there was someone on the scene soon after discovery of the body who wants / needs to remain anonymous.

Just a side note. Thom York's new album The Eraser has a track on it called Harrowdown Hill. It is a song about the death (murder) of David Kelly and is one of the strongest songs on the album.

Here are the lyrics;

Don't walk the plank like I did
You will be dispensed with
When you've become inconvienent
Up on harrowdown hill
There where you go to school
Thats where I am
Thats where I'm lying down

Did I fall or was I pushed?
Did I fall or was I pushed?
And wheres the blood?
And wheres the blood?

But i'm coming home
I'm coming home
To make it all right
So dry your eyes

We think the same things at the same time
We just cant do anything about it

So don't ask me
Ask the ministry
Don't ask me
Ask the ministry

We think the same things at the same time
There are so many of us
So you can't count

We think the same things at the same time
There are too many of us
So you can't count

Can you see me when I'm running?
Can you see me when I'm running?
Away from them
Away from them

I can't take their pressure
No one cares if you live or die
They just want me gone
They want me gone

But i'm coming home
I'm coming home
To make it all right
So dry your eyes

We think the same things at the same time
We just cant do anything about it

We think the same things at the same time
There are too many of us
So you can't
So you can't count

It was a slippery slippery slippery slope
It was a slippery slippery slippery slope
I feel me slipping in and out of conciousness
I feel me slipping in and out of conciousness_________________"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
-William James

Interesting development in this story, not reported nationally: On my local news in Sussex the week before last there was a story about Norman Baker having reported to the police that his computer's hard disk had been remotely wiped. Hope he kept a backup.

i seem to remember hearing something about lord hutton saying that this conflict of statements wasn't important or something? anyone remember this?_________________"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act"

I welcome the opportunity to introduce this debate. I am pleased to see the Minister for the Middle East, the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells) in his place; I was expecting the Minister for Europe, the right hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Hoon) to answer the debate. The Minister for the Middle East is respected throughout the House.

I am glad that we have our security services MI5 and MI6 in place. It is difficult to imagine what sort of society we would have if such organisations were not doing that important work for us. However, I hope that the Minister will agree that it wrong to give any organ of the state, no matter what it does, a blank cheque. Hon. Members have a proper role in holding them to account—commensurate, of course, with national security.

We need a professional, properly funded and rational organisation in MI6. In my view, we want one that is free from inappropriate political interference and—a linked matter—one that acts in a British national interest. I want to explore today whether those two criteria were being met by MI6 in its present and immediately past activities. It seems to me—the Minister will doubtless respond to this point—that MI6 follows broad political objectives such as safeguarding national security and protecting our economic interests, and that it does so by providing the best, secure intelligence to further those aims.

In hindsight, it is clear that in the run up to the Iraq war we sold a distortion of intelligence to help a narrow political objective—to shape public opinion towards supporting a pre-emptive attack on Iraq. The Minister will doubtless be familiar with the responses in the Butler report, a useful document. It gives an interesting description at paragraph 32:

"The Government wanted an unclassified document on which it could draw in its advocacy of its policy. The JIC sought to offer a dispassionate assessment of intelligence".

At paragraph 34, the report states:

"We conclude that it was a serious weakness that the JIC's warnings on the limitations of the intelligence underlying its judgements were not made sufficiently clear in the dossier."

At paragraph 33, it states that

"judgements in the dossier went to (although not beyond) the outer limits of the intelligence available."

At paragraph 35, the report says that

"more weight was placed on the intelligence than it could bear."

Clearly, there are lessons to be learned. I do not want to revisit the entire history of the Hutton inquiry or of matters leading to the Iraq war, but that is an important perception. It would be useful to see whether the problem is being corrected.

I want to pursue two issues. The first is the role of John Scarlett, then head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, in the dodgy dossier and subsequently. The second is the use of information. It is clear that language was changed in order to turn neutral intelligence—the best available analysis, with all the caveats built into it—into something much more certain. In other words—I dare say that it was like a red rag to a bull—what Andrew Gilligan said was by and large right.

It is clear that words such as "might" and "possibly" were removed, and more certain words such as "can" and "will" put in their place. We also know from extensive evidence in the Hutton inquiry that many of those [b]changes were proposed by Alastair Campbell and No. 10[/b]. I do not blame Mr. Campbell; he was doing his job. However, I do blame John Scarlett, head of JIC, for succumbing to that pressure and allowing what was supposed to be a neutral intelligence document to be manipulated for political purposes. We now know that no weapons of mass destruction were to be found. There is a serious question mark over why John Scarlett should have allowed his intelligence to be changed in that way. Indeed, that episode did the intelligence services, which we want to hold in the highest regard, a considerable disservice.

I draw the Minister's to the 45-minute claim, and also to a prominent article in The Observer of 15 May 2005 by the respected journalist Anthony Barnett. In it, he alleged that John Scarlett had asked another weapons inspector, the Australian Dr. Rod Barton, to sex up another dossier by inserting nine "nuggets". The article stated:

"Barton had been hand-picked by the CIA to be the special adviser to the Iraq Survey Group".

In that capacity, Barton was preparing a document, but the group was preparing to reach quite different and damning conclusions. The article reported that

"Saddam did not have any WMDs at the time of the US-led invasion",

and it alleged—I have no knowledge of whether it is true—that Saddam

"had not had any programmes to manufacture such weapons after 1991."

In response to that, The Observer quotes Dr. Barton as saying that

"senior figures in British intelligence tired to stop the ISG publishing its interim report when they realised what it would say. He"—

that is Dr. Barton—

"also reveals how when this failed, John Scarlett...tried to strengthen the ISG report by inserting nine 'nuggets' of information to imply Saddam's WMD programmes were active".

Included in that article were suggestions that

"Saddam was working on a smallpox weapon, did have mobile biological laboratories and was developing research equipment for use in nuclear weapons."

The report continues:

"I couldn't believe it...He"—

that is John Scarlett—

"was suggesting dragging things from a previous report [that the ISG had found to be false] to use them to, well, 'sex it up'. It was an attempt to make our report appear to imply that maybe there were still WMD out there. I knew he had been responsible for your [government's] dossier and then I realised he was trying to do the same thing."

Anthony Barnett of The Observer makes a serious allegation. I am not aware whether it has been properly investigated or a proper rebuttal given—if, indeed, a rebuttal is appropriate. I ask the Minister to comment on that report. I ask specifically whether it is true, and if so where it leaves John Scarlett, who appears to be continuing the mistakes—I put it neutrally—involved in drawing up the dossier prior to the invasion of Iraq. It would be helpful if the Minister were to publish the e-mail correspondence between John Scarlett and the ISG in that regard. It seems not to be a security matter, but a matter of public interest with no security implications.

I turn to another MI6 strand, which is the activities carried out by the information operations unit. The interests of the Government of the day are not necessarily those of the nation as a whole. That message is well understood by civil servants—it is established in the civil service code of practice—and it also applies to intelligence officers. Yet Nick Rufford, a journalist with The Sunday Times, produced a story on 28 December 2003 in which he alleged that attempts were made by MI6 through something called "operation mass appeal" to plant stories in the media about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector, was reported as saying

"The aim was to convince the public that Iraq was a far greater threat than it actually was".

If that is so, it suggests that MI6 was being used to further a narrow political objective rather than anything in the national interest. If I worked for MI6, I would be rather concerned that my activities were being manipulated in that way. Nick Rufford's story was backed up by a report by the respected journalist Seymour Hersh, on the other side of the pond, in which he reported a former American intelligence officer as saying,

"It was intelligence that was nonsense, and that we couldn't move on, but the Brits wanted to plant stories in England and around the world".

We need to know what MI6's role in this country is. Many of have naturally assumed that its activities have taken place abroad, but there are clear suggestions that it has been involved in disinformation campaigns on the UK mainland. Other newspaper reports, which I do not have time to refer to, suggest that the information operations unit has been planting favourable stories with friendly journalists and stories in other papers that are damaging to those who are critical ofMI6's activities—or perhaps I should say of the Government's activities.

The other strand that I want to touch on in my last five minutes is the closeness of this country to the United States Administration. That has of course been a great strength to us over many years—indeed, since the second world war. The difference now is the that present US Administration are operating on a different basis of morality from that on which previous Administrations operated, up to and including the Clinton era. We have seen an abandonment of some of the norms of behaviour that the US introduced after the second world war with support from other western countries.

That is a matter for the US, except that too often it appears that UK foreign policy is merely a subset of US foreign policy. Nothing that has been overheard in conversations on microphones in recent days has done much to dispel that. For example, US foreign policy now appears to accept the principle of pre-emptive military action. Al Gore, the former vice-president, said that the doctrine would replace

"a world in which states consider themselves subject to law"

with

"the notion that there is no law but the discretion of the President of the United States."

That is his take, and he ought to know.

Again, in a sense that is a matter for the US, except if we follow that policy. As we indeed appear to follow US foreign policy quite slavishly, it is legitimate to ask the Minister whether other aspects of US foreign policy have been followed by the UK, through MI6. Can he tell me, for example, what the MI6's involvement in Guantanamo Bay has been? It is well documented that MI6 officials have been over there. What have they been doing? Have they made it plain to the US that Guantanamo Bay should be closed down or have they been following a different policy of accepting that it is there—whether or not we would have started it—and trying to deal with it as it is?

The US has also been involved in the horrors of Abu Ghraib. I hope very much that we would never endorse that sort of thing in any shape or form. We have heard allegations of extraordinary rendition, which the Intelligence and Security Committee is now looking into. I would be grateful if the Minister said something about that and whether we have had any involvement at all in extraordinary rendition, either directly or through connivance.

The US has offered support for regimes across the world that are questionable in morality terms—let me put it as neutrally as I can. The Minister will be aware of the publication about Uzbekistan by Craig Murray, the former ambassador, which suggests that there was torture, imprisonment and all sorts of human rights abuses that we did nothing about, mainly because we thought that we had a geopolitical interest in having the President there on board.

There is also the issue of legitimised assassinations. I refer the Minister to a report in The Guardian on29 October 2001 that said:

"Bush gives green light to CIA for assassination of named terrorists",

overturning a 25-year ban on assassinations. That was referred to in a further report in The Guardian on13 August 2002 that said:

"The US government is considering plans to send elite military units on missions to assassinate"

terrorists

"in countries around the world, without necessarily informing the governments involved, it was reported yesterday.

The Pentagon is discussing proposals which could see special operations units dispatched to capture or kill terrorists wherever they are believed to be hiding."

What is the Government's policy on that? Do we accept the truth of that report in The Guardian? If the Minister thinks that it is untrue, he can say so; if he thinks that it is true, what policy have we adopted on it? Are we informed by the Americans of what they are doing? Given the close relationship between the CIA and MI6, are we—horrible as it is to ask—in any way involved in such a policy?

I need to ask the Minister a number of questions. Will he publish the e-mails and other correspondence relating to John Scarlett's dealings with the ISG and the influencing of the report? Will the Minister set out the boundaries of action for MI6 in operating within this country, as opposed to operating abroad? Will he clarify the role of the information operations unit and whether it has been involved in briefing journalists and putting out information or disinformation to the British press in order to influence public opinion in this country? Will he confirm whether MI6 was in any way involved in extraordinary renditions? Does he have any knowledge at all of whether MI6 is involved in the apparent US policy of targeted assassinations in this country or elsewhere?

There is a factual error in that the body was first discovered by the volunteers and not the paramedics. Also the evidence presented (to Hutton) shows that the body was first (likely) moved from a laying down position to the sitting up (against the tree) position (as it was seen by the volunteers) and then back to the laying down position (presumably because it was realised that the forensic evidence would reveal that he died on his back - vomit marks on the face etc) as it was first seen by the amublance crew and the pathologist.

Although this is good publicity for the evidence I find Melanie's tone somewhat irritating. If it hadn't been for lay researchers and the internet would this evidence be seeing the light of day now?

I have always been curious why, when his body was either leaning against a tree or near the tree (an issue in itself) a forensic tent was erected in the middle of a field as is evident in almost all aerial video footage of the scene. There must have been something in the midddle of that field worthy of forensic examination.

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